American Gothic | The Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories Exhibition History Art Institute of Chicago, The Forty-third Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, October 30-December 14, 1930, cat. 207, ill. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, February 1931. Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Albright Art Gallery, Twenty-Fifth Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists, April 26-June 22, 1931, cat. 139, ill. p. 26. San Diego Fine Art Gallery, Show of Contemporary Eastern Painting [probably], c. June 1932, no cat.; traveled to Santa Barbara, Calif., Faulkner Memorial Art Gallery, c. August 1932. New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Paintings and Prints by Chicago Artists, February 28-March 30, 1933, cat. 37, ill. frontispiece. Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1-November 1, 1933, cat.

666, pl. 92. Washington, DC., Phillips Collection, November 1933-February 1934. Philadelphia, Pa., Pennsylvania Mus of Art, March 31-April 10, 1934. Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1-November 1, 1934, cat. 716. Chicago, Lakeside Press Galleries, Loan Exhibition of Drawings and Paintings by Grant Wood, February-March 1935, cat. 33, ill. p. 23. New York, Ferargil Galleries, An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Grant Wood, March-April 1935, cat. 15. Kansas City, Mo., William R. Nelson Gallery, October 2-November 8, 1935. Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, The Centennial Exposition, June 6-November 29, 1936, cat. 15, ill. p. 64. Chicago, Ill., Chicago Woman's Club, Jan 20, 1937.

Bloomington, Ill., Central Illinois Art Exposition, March 19-April 8, 1939, cat. 106, ill. p. 29. Iowa City, Fine Arts Festival, Iowa Union Lounge, University of Iowa, Exhibition of Paintings by Grant Wood and Marvin D. Cone, July 16-23, 1939, cat. 23. Art Institute of Chicago, Half a Century of American Art, November 16, 1939-January 7, 1940, cat. 178, pl. 46. Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Cranbrook Academy of Art, May 17-June 6, 1940. Northampton, Mass., Smith College Museum of Art, American Art: Aspects of American Painting, 1900-1940, June 12-22, 1940, cat. 33. Worcester, Mass., Worcester Art Museum, A Decade of American Painting 1930-1940, February 18-March 22, 1942, ill.

p. 23. Cedar Rapids Art Association, Grant Wood Memorial Exhibition, September 1-October 1, 1942, no cat. See Cedar Rapids Gazette, 9/6/1942. Art Institute of Chicago, Memorial Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Grant Wood, included in the Fifty-third Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, October 29-December 12, 1942, cat. 2, color ill. frontispiece. New York, Museum of Modern Art, 20th Century Portraits, December 8, 1942-January 24, 1943, p. 145, ill. p. 99. Baltimore, Md., February 12-March 7, 1943. Worcester Art Museum, March 17-April 19, 1943. Boston, The Institute of Modern Art, Ten Americans, October 20-November 21, 1943, cat. 29, ill.

Saginaw, Mich., Saginaw Museum of Art, An Exhibition of American Painting from Colonial Times until Today, January 10-February 15, 1948, cat. 71, pl. 13. Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Famous American Paintings, October 9-31, 1948, n.pag., ill. Boston, Institute of Contemporary Art, Milestones of American Painting in Our Century, c. January 2-c. March 3, 1949, cat. 21. Montreal, Canada, March 18-April 20, 1949. Canadian National Exhibition Art Exhibit, August 26-September 10, 1949. Beloit, Wisc., Beloit College, October 11-November 11, 1949. Dayton, Ohio, Dayton Art Institute, The Artist and His Family, March 3-April 1950, cat. 40. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Coe College, Centennial Exhibition, May 15-June 9, 1952, cat. 24.

New York, Wildenstein, Landmarks in American Art, 1670-1950, Feb 26-Mar 28, 1953, cat. 50, ill. Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, 125 Years of American Art, September 15-October 11, 1953, cat. 59, ill. p. 18. Dubuque, Iowa, Dubuque Art Association, Thirty Years of Grant Wood, Feb 15-Feb 23, 1955, cat. 9. Des Moines, Iowa, Des Moines Art Center, Communicating Art from Midwest Collections: American and European Paintings and Sculpture, 1835-1955, October 13-November 6, 1955, cat. 20, ill. Davenport, Iowa, Davenport Municipal Art Gallery, Grant Wood and the American Scene, February 3-24, 1957, cat. 5, ill. p. 5.

Lake Forest, Ill., Durand Art Institute, Lake Forest College, A Century Of American Painting: Masterpieces Loaned by The Art Institute of Chicago, June 10-16, 1957, cat. 24. Brooklyn, NY, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Face of America: The History of Portraiture in the United States, November 13, 1957-January 26, 1958, cat. 92, fig. 41. Washington, DC, Corcoran Gallery of Art, The American Muse: Parallel Trends in Literature and Art, April 4-May 17, 1959, cat. 130. Art Institute of Chicago, Art in Illinois, In Honor of the Illinois Sesquicentennial, June 15-September 8, 1968, p. 10. Art Institute of Chicago, 100 Artists, 100 Years: Alumni of the SAIC, Centennial Exhibition, November 23, 1979-January 20, 1980, cat. 112, ill. p. 35.

New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision, June 16-September 4, 1983, cat. 25, pl. 32, traveled to Minneapolis Institute of Arts, September 25, 1983-January 1, 1984, Art Institute of Chicago, January 21-April 15, 1984; San Francisco, M. H. DeYoung Memorial Museum, May 12-August 12, 1984. Omaha, Neb., Joslyn Art Museum, Grant Wood: An American Master Revealed, December 10, 1995-February 25, 1996, cat. 14, pl. 16, traveled to Davenport, Iowa, Davenport Museum of Art, March 23-September 8, 1996; Worcester, Mass., Worcester Art Museum, October 6-December 31, 1996.

New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The American Century: Art and Culture, 1900-1950, April 23-August 22, 1999, cat. 435, color ill. p. 225. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Grant Wood at 5 Turner Alley, September 10-December 4, 2005. Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Grant Wood's Studio: Birthplace of "American Gothic," March 10-June 11, 2006. Des Moines Art Center, After Many Springs: Art in the Midwest in the 1930s, January 30-March 30, 2009.

Art Institute of Chicago, "America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s," June 5-September 18, 2016; travels to Paris, Musee de l'Orangerie, October 15, 2016-January 30, 2017; London, Royal Academy, February 25-June 4, 2017, cat. 47. Publication History Anita Brenner, "Is There An American Art?," The New York Times Magazine (November 23, 1941), ill. p. 13. Frederick S. Wight, Milestones of American Painting in Our Century, introduction by Lloyd Goodrich (Boston: The Institute of Contemporary Art with Chanticleer Press, New York, 1949), pp. 30, 74, ill. pl. 21, p. 75. Henri Dorra, The American Muse (Viking Press, 1961), p. 124, ill. p. 156.

Matthew Baigell, The American Scene: American Painting of the 1930's (Praeger Publishers, 1974), pp. 18, 109, 110, 111, ill. 1, p. 12. Wanda Corn, "The painting that became a symbol of a nation's spirit," Smithsonian 11, 8 (November 1980), pp. 84-96, ill. p. 85. Wanda M. Corn, Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision, exh. cat. (Minneapolis Institute of Arts/Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 3, 25-26, 33, 35, 60, 128-142, pl. 32. Wanda M. Corn, "The Birth of a National Icon: Grant Wood's American Gothic," The Art Institute of Chicago Centennial Lectures, Museum Studies 10 (Art Institute of Chicago/Contemporary Books, Inc., 1983), pp. 253-275, fig. 1.

Davenport Museum of Art, Iowa, Grant Wood: An American Master Revealed (Davenport Museum of Art/Pomegranate Books, 1995), pp. 24, 69-73, 96-98, cat. 16, pl. 16. Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth-Century Painting and Sculpture, selected by James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein (Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), p. 67, ill. James M. Dennis, Renegade Regionalists: The Modern Independence of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry (University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), pp. 14, 19-20, 100-02, fig. 7. Lea Rosson DeLong, Grant Wood's Main Street: Art, Literature and the American Midwest, exh. cat. (Ames, Iowa: Brunnier Art Museum, University Museums, 2004), pp.

17-18, 24, 27-29, 39, 97, 104, 106, 159, 203, 205, 207, fig. 12. Thomas Hoving, American Gothic: The Biography of Grant Wood's American Masterpiece (Chamberlain Bros., 2005). Stephen Biel, American Gothic: A Life of America's Most Famous Painting (W.W. Norton & Co., 2005). Sue Taylor, "Grant Wood's Family Album," American Art 19, 2 (Summer 2005): 48-67. Judith A. Barter et al., "American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955," (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 79. Laura Hoptman, "Wyeth: Christina's World," One on One (The Museum of Modern Art, 2012), p. 4 (ill.).

Duane Preble Emeritus et al., Prebles' Artforms (Pearson, 2013), 11th ed., p. 428. (ill.). Chantal Georgel, "Millet," (Citadelles et Mazenod, 2014), (ill.). Ownership History The artist; sold to the Art Institute, November 1930. Add this item to: American Gothic by Grant Wood – Facts & History about the Painting 29.25 in × 24.25 in 74.3 cm × 62.4 cm American Gothic is a painting by American artist Grant Wood in 1930. Shown is a farmer and his spinster daughter in front of their house. The models on the painting were Wood’s sister, Nan, wearing a colonial print apron mimicking 19th century Americana, and Wood’s dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby from Iowa. Wood painted the house along with the people he imagined might live there. The house actually exists in Eldon, Iowa. It was built in the American Gothic style. The models never sat in front of the house, and each element was painted separately.

The painting measures 29.25 inches by 24.5 inches, which is equivalent to 74.3 cm by 62.4 cm. The Artist: Grant Wood Grant Wood was born on February 13, 1892 in Iowa. After the death of his father in 1901, his family moved to Cedar Rapids where he began as an apprentice at a metal shop. He enrolled at an art school in 1910 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1913, he attended the Art Institute of Chicago where he worked as a silversmith. From 1934 to 1941, he taught painting at the University of Iowa’s School of Art. A day after celebrating his 51st birthday in 1942, Wood died of liver cancer at the university’s hospital. Wood had been influenced by the works of 15th century Flemish artist Jan Van Eyck. Other famous paintings by Grant Wood include: The Little Chapel Chancelade (1926), Woman with Plants (1929) And John B. Turner, Pioneer (1929).

Painting Inspirations Wood saw the house while travelling through the Iowa landscape in the summer of 1930, he was inspired. Some people thought that Grant Wood was making fun of small town folk. The house had an unusual window. The design is based on Gothic architecture which originates from Europe, as opposed to an American farmhouse. The contrast caught the artist’s attention that led to the painting of American Gothic. Reception of the Painting Wood entered American Gothic at a competition sponsored by the Art Institute of Chicago. Initially, the judges viewed it as a comic valentine. However, a patron convinced them to award it a bronze medal and a cash prize of $300. The Art Institute bought the painting where it remains to this day. Soon after, the painting began to appear in newspapers. When the image finally appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Iowans became furious. A woman threatened to bite Wood’s ear off. However, Grant explained that his intention was not to misrepresent Iowans, but to portray America as a whole. The arrival of the Great Depression was upon the country, the painting was seen as a portrayal of the steadfast American pioneer spirit. Artistic Features The painting is obviously fictional in many ways.

First, it has a 19th century theme painted in the 20th century. Second, the title itself refers to the architecture of the house, with the artist taking liberty to add the type of people he believed who may live there. The house’s medieval style window looks like one you may find at a church, in fact the potted plants on the porch and the decorative blind distinguishes the wooden house from a church. 2 responses to “American Gothic” Dusk Ok, first of, you guys have a lot of grammer-related mistakes on here. It makes you seem rather un-proffesional, viewer-edited database or not. Third, thanks for trying! ery helpful otherwise. The Story Behind Grant Wood's 'American Gothic' : NPR The Story Behind Grant Wood's 'American Gothic' Embed Embed The Story Behind Grant Wood's 'American Gothic' The Story Behind Grant Wood's 'American Gothic' Embed Embed Grant Wood (American). American Gothic, 1930. Oil on board. The Art Institute of Chicago, Friends of American Art collection, (catalog number) 1930.934. The Art Institute of Chicago hide caption toggle caption The Art Institute of Chicago Grant Wood (American).

American Gothic, 1930. Oil on board. The Art Institute of Chicago, Friends of American Art collection, (catalog number) 1930.934. The Art Institute of Chicago The Grant Wood painting American Gothic is a touchstone of American culture, depicting an upright Midwestern family on the farm. The story behind the painting is the subject of Thomas Hoving's book American Gothic: The Biography of Grant Wood's American Masterpiece. A native of Iowa, Wood and his paintings were rooted in the Midwest. His style, however, owed something to the realism of 15th-century northern European artists. Susan Stamberg interviews Hoving, already a best-selling author and once the director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, about his exploration into Wood's most famous painting. Related NPR Stories History of the House « American Gothic House Center – Eldon, IA History of the House History of the House The American Gothic House in Eldon, Iowa is famous as the backdrop of Grant Wood’s 1930 painting American Gothic. Since completion, the painting has become an American icon and the model for countless number of parodies.

The original portion of the house that contains the two Gothic windows was built in 1881-82 by Catherine and Charles Dibble. As the original owners of the home, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Dibble House. Mr. Dibble owned a livery stable in Eldon. It appears he later lost the house and it was sold for overdue taxes. Over the years the house has changed hands with the owners either living in the house or maintaining it as a rental property. The State of Iowa is the current owner, acquiring it in 1991 when then-owner Carl Smith donated it to the State Historical Society of Iowa. It was in 1930 that the famous house was seen by Grant Wood. Wood was in Eldon for an art exhibition being done by Edward Rowan, who was the director of the Cedar Rapids Little Art Gallery. Rowan had taken a great interest in Eldon and believed that it was prime location to conduct an experiment in bringing art to remote rural areas. It is unclear why Rowan chose Eldon for his experiment, other than having an acquaintance from Eldon, John Sharp.

Sharp was an art student at the University of Iowa and frequently went to the Little Gallery in Cedar Rapids. For whatever reason that Rowan picked Eldon, is was a surprise and delight to the residents as reflected in The Eldon Forum on July 31, 1930: “The people of Eldon and vicinity are to be given an unusual treat during the month of August by the establishing of a little art gallery in this city.” The one-month long project featured exhibitions by a different artiest each week, classes in drawing and watercolors for children and music appreciation classes for older youth. Sharp’s parents served as one of the local hosts for the event known as the “Eldon Art Center.” It was for one of these exhibitions that Rowan invited Grant Wood, who he became acquainted with through the Little Gallery, to the Eldon Art Center to give an exhibition. John Sharp, who knew Wood through Rowan’s art gallery, took Wood on a drive one afternoon where Wood spotted the house with the unique window. Upon sight, he asked Sharp to pull over so he could make a sketch. All he had available was a used envelope, and that was where what would become one of the most recognizable painting in the world was born.

In later interviews, when asked why the house caught his eye, Wood said he found the window amusing and called it “pretentious” for such a small house. As he did with most paintings, he sketched his idea on site, but returned to his studio in Cedar Rapids to complete the work. The great windows Wood saw at the American Gothic House were believed to be for a decorative purpose. However, upon further investigation and probably not known to Wood, the window is hinged and was used to move furnishings either into or out of the upper floor, as the inner stairway with its tight corner, is not suitable for moving large pieces of furniture such as a bed or dresser. It is unknown why the Dibble family chose to include Gothic windows in the gables of their home. It is believed that the windows were purchased through the Sears and Roebuck catalog, but why they chose a window that is more associated with church architecture no one knows for sure. One thought is among the struggles of life and work, this was one way that the Dibbles were able to add a little beauty to their everyday lives. The use of the Gothic windows follows a mid-19th century trend know as Carpenter Gothic.

The style grew out of a need for quickly built homes and a desire for fanciful details. The price to add fanciful details to wood-framed structures decreased significantly so that even the humblest homes were able to incorporate some extra beauty. Identifying features of Carpenter Gothic include steeply pitched roofs and gables, carved porch railings, strong vertical design elements, such as board and batten siding and of course, pointed-arch windows. This beautifully crafted house still stands where it was first built. In the 1960’s and early 1970’s, there were discussions about moving the house to a more convenient location, but no action was taken. With its listing on the National Register of Historic Places (1974), the donation to the State Historical Society of Iowa by Carl E. Smith (1991), and the addition of the American Gothic House Center (2007), the house is secure in its original location. Click here to view a chronological history of the American Gothic House. Grant Wood's 'American Gothic' | Mental Floss Grant Wood's 'American Gothic' Getty Images Like us on Facebook No American artwork has been parodied more than American Gothic.

Zombies, dogs, Beavis and Butt-Head, the Muppets, Lego figures, and even Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton have taken a turn with the pitchfork. But the painting itself is no joke—American Gothic is as recognizable as the Mona Lisa and The Scream. During the Great Depression, the masterpiece gave hope to a desperate nation, and it helped shape the notion of the Midwest as a land of hard work and honest values. Today, the painting is firmly embedded in our cultural vocabulary. Yet, for all its fame, few people know the story of Grant Wood and how the piece also unraveled his life. That Quirky Wood Kid In 1929, Grant Wood was a 38-year-old unknown. The artist was living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the attic of a funeral-home carriage house. Though the location may seem morbid, Wood spruced up his home with whimsical decorations. He replaced the front door with a repurposed coffin lid and outfitted the entrance with a dial that indicated if he was in, out, asleep, painting, or having a party.

Wood wasn’t the only one stuffed into this loft space: He shared the studio with his mother and sister, all three sleeping side by side on pull-out beds. Oddly enough, none of this shocked the neighbors. As a closeted gay man, Wood avoided what his sister, Nan, called “any earmarks of the artist.” He dressed exclusively in overalls, a signifier that the painting he did was gritty—man’s work. And he benefited from being a local. People in Cedar Rapids found Wood’s eccentricities charming. Friends shook their heads and smiled when he forgot to pay his bills. They even ignored his flimsy excuses for avoiding marriage. Wood was a lovable bachelor who wanted to take care of his widowed mother, that’s all. Painting was just another of Wood’s harmless quirks—at least now that he’d given up living in Europe. The artist had spent good chunks of the 1920s in Paris and Munich, but announced upon his 1928 return that he was back for good. The freewheeling and permissive nature of the European art scene had fascinated him.

But when a solo show in Paris was met with critical indifference, it put a damper on the continent’s shine. Still, Wood’s style benefited from his experiences abroad. His previously atmospheric, Impressionistic painting took on a hard-edged, Old Master quality. He drew inspiration from the work of the Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who recast biblical narratives as scenes from his own time. And he took composition cues from 15th-century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck. After three stints in Europe, Wood was ready for home. As the artist told the Chicago Tribune, “I spent 20 years wandering around the world hunting ‘arty’ subjects to paint. I came back ... and the first thing I noticed was the cross-stitched embroidery of my mother’s kitchen apron.” That moment changed him. Armed with new technique, and a new appreciation for the mundane, Wood no longer needed to travel. What he needed was right there, in Iowa. Going Goth In August 1930, Wood spotted an unusual farmhouse on a drive through the tiny town of Eldon, Iowa. The house had a strange and compelling feature: a high, arched window in the Carpenter Gothic style.

The artist was immediately transfixed by the structure. He needed to know what sort of people resided there. But instead of simply knocking on the door, Wood decided to capture the farmhouse in paint and tease out the story for himself. Piece by piece, he sorted through the puzzle. Wood started by asking his dentist, 62-year-old Byron McKeeby, to serve as the male model. Throughout his life, Wood had suffered from an incurable sweet tooth—he took half a cup of sugar with his coffee, and even poured sugar on his lettuce. Over the years, he spent plenty of time in McKeeby’s chair studying and admiring the dentist’s grim, oval face. Now seemed like the perfect time to paint it. For the farmer’s companion, Wood intended to use his mother, Hattie, as a model. But when he realized that posing would be too exhausting for her, he asked his 32-year-old sister, Nan, to don Hattie’s rickrack-trimmed apron and cameo pin. While the cast was familiar, the composition was something completely new. The couple stands posed before their simple farmhouse, its only flourish an arched window purchased from Sears.

The man stares almost directly at the viewer while clutching his pitchfork; his thin lips and arched eyebrows give him a stern, slightly quizzical look. The woman looks off to the side as if unwilling to meet the viewer’s gaze, a single curled tendril of hair escaping from her bun. Both have unnaturally long faces and thin necks, as if to emphasize their uprightness. They are hardworking and humorless, dignified and honest. Wood submitted American Gothic—the name a nod to the house’s architectural style—to a 1930 competition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Overnight, the painting became a hit. American Gothic won a bronze medal and a $300 prize, was acquired by the museum, and was reproduced in newspapers around the country. Something about it resonated with audiences, and in that mysterious process by which paintings become famous, it quickly achieved near-universal recognition. Not everyone saw the same thing. Some perceived the work as a scathing parody of the Midwest—one outraged farm wife even threatened to bite off Wood’s ear. Meanwhile, Gertrude Stein and other critics praised the painting as a cutting small-town satire, the visual equivalent of Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street.

Still others saw the painting as honoring the Midwest and its strong values. As the Great Depression bore down on the country, Americans yearned for positive depictions of themselves, and Wood’s work provided the nation with a pair of ready-made secular saints of the American heartland. Perhaps the strangest reaction, however, was from an audience focused on the age disparity between the husband and wife in the picture. Protests poured in. Nan, too, became increasingly concerned—she didn’t want to be memorialized as “married” to a much older man. So Wood altered his initial stance to claim that the painting depicted a father and daughter. In fact, Wood frequently rewrote the artwork’s history. When the painting was hailed as a satire, he went along; when it was declared an homage to the Midwest, he agreed with that, too. Finally, he came out with a bold statement that clarified nothing: “There is satire in it, but only as there is satire in any realistic statement. These are types of people I have known all my life.

I tried to characterize them truthfully—to make them more like themselves than they were in actual life.” A Mixed Legacy With the success of American Gothic, Wood finally received the validation of his talent that he’d been seeking all his life. He was declared the founder of a new school of art, called Regionalism, and he was quick to embrace the narrative. “All the good ideas I’ve ever had came to me while I was milking a cow,” Wood famously told the press. In truth, he hated life on the farm, and was repulsed by cow udders and freshly laid chicken eggs. For Wood, the trade-off for fame was steep, and the artist was ill-equipped to deal with the scrutiny. He and his family lost all of their privacy. Strange fans began showing up at his apartment, ignoring the dial on the door and walking right inside. People started asking pointed questions about his bachelor status. A blackmailer even confronted Wood, threatening to reveal lurid secrets from his past. And as a nation looked to Wood as the embodiment of the Midwestern man, Wood found it harder and harder to negotiate his double life. By 1935, he was desperate. He married an older divorcée and fled Cedar Rapids.

While the marriage was one of convenience, the strains of the arrangement left him both financially and creatively bankrupt. Meanwhile, Wood’s tricks had finally worn thin. People were tiring of Regionalism, and Wood found it increasingly difficult to conceal his sexuality. He spent more and more time drawing the male figure, and in 1937, he produced Sultry Night. The piece showed a naked man standing next to a trough pouring a bucket of water over his body. When questioned, Wood defended the work as depicting the ordinary bathing habits of hired men on farms. The explanation fooled no one. Things got worse: When Wood submitted the painting to a national juried show, he was asked to withdraw it. Then, the piece was barred from being sent through the mail after the Post Office deemed it “pornographic.” Wood was mortified. He sawed the canvas in half, burned the nude portion of the painting, and didn’t paint another picture for more than a year. The artist’s life was complicated by a divorce. And when Time magazine launched an investigation into the truth about his sexuality, Wood was forced to abandon a coveted teaching position at the University of Iowa. Wood might have pulled through all these challenges, but he never got the chance.

In 1941, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died on February 12, 1942, one day before his 51st birthday and not quite 12 years after the completion of American Gothic. As for his masterpiece, its fame continued to grow after Wood’s death. Easily parodied, it’s been reimagined in movies, TV shows, marketing campaigns, even pornography. And audiences seem unable to put away the painting—to assign it a single, easy interpretation and just let it be. American Gothic remains inscrutable: satire and homage, highbrow and lowbrow, honest and creepy all at the same time. In the end, what makes the painting so successful is that it begs you to look closer and ask questions—the very thing Wood never wanted for himself. American Gothic 101 Truly Gothic Wood was inspired by the Old Masters of Northern Europe, and elements of the painting make it a modern version of Late Gothic art: the clear blue sky like those typically painted above Christ or the Virgin Mary; the woman’s elongated face like that of a Madonna; and the flat, finished surface, an effect Wood created by painstakingly smoothing the surface of the canvas with a razor blade.

* Windows of the Soul? Viewers often come away from American Gothic with a sense of disquiet, unable to stop thinking about the most disturbing element—the closed and curtained window. Biographer R. Tripp Evans called the window “a vanishing point in more than one sense,” adding, “Family secrets, dead bodies, incest, and murder all haunt this work, and they enter the painting here.” * Making a Cameo The pin on the woman’s dress had been a gift from Grant Wood to his mother, Hattie. Some read the painting as a one-step-removed portrait of Wood’s parents, the stern, humorless father being a stand-in for his own dad. * On One Hand Critics have noted that the farmer’s clenched fist anchors the painting (without it, the pitchfork fades into the background). Wood was enamored with his dentist’s hand, once gripping it tight and remarking, “This is a marvelous hand. This has strength. This has character.” * Fever Pitch When Iowans complained that pitchforks typically have four tines, not three, Wood defended his depiction. He claimed the tool he drew was the kind used for pitching hay. But the argument misses the point.

The verticals of the three tines are echoed throughout the painting: in the pocket, windows, the man’s shirt and face, and the roof of the barn. This article first appeared in mental_floss magazine, available wherever brilliant/lots of magazines are sold. Get a risk-free issue here! American Gothic | The Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago 78 x 65.3 cm (30 3/4 x 25 3/4 in.) Signed and dated lower right on overalls: GRANT / WOOD / 1930 Friends of American Art Collection, 1930.934 Grant Wood’s American Gothic caused a stir in 1930 when it was exhibited for the first time at the Art Institute of Chicago and awarded a prize of 300 dollars. Newspapers across the country carried the story, and the painting of a farm couple posed before a white house brought the artist instant fame. The Iowa native, then in his late 30s, was enchanted by a cottage he had seen in the small southern Iowa town of Eldon .

Its Gothic Revival style , indicated by the upper window designed to resemble a medieval pointed arch, inspired the painting’s title. He asked his dentist and his sister Nan to pose as a farmer and his unmarried daughter. The highly detailed style and rigid frontal arrangement of the figures were inspired by Northern Renaissance art, which the artist studied during three trips to Europe. After returning to Iowa , he became increasingly appreciative of the traditions of the Midwest , which he also celebrated in works such as this one. American Gothic remains one of the most famous paintings in the history of American art. It is a primary example of Regionalism, a movement that aggressively opposed European abstract art, preferring depictions of rural American subjects rendered in a representational style. The painting has become part of American popular culture, and the couple has been the subject of endless parodies . Some believe that Wood used this painting to satirize the narrow-mindedness and repression that has been said to characterize Midwestern culture, an accusation he denied. The painting may also be read as a glorification of the moral virtue of rural America or even as an ambiguous mixture of praise and satire.

The models for American Gothic The models for American Gothic posted by Jason Kottke Feb 08, 2012 In 1930, Iowa artist Grant Wood painted American Gothic . The models he used for the painting were his sister Nan Wood Graham and his dentist, Byron McKeeby. Here they are next to the painting: Wood made the painting after spotting a small house in Eldon, Iowa: More about... Sister Wendy's American Collection | Selected Works | American Gothic 29 1/4 x 24 5/8 in. (74.3 x 62.4 cm) Friends of American Art Collection Acquired in 1930 Grant Wood, American, 1891-1942, American Gothic, 1930, oil on beaverboard, 74.3 x 62.4 cm, Friends of American Art Collection, All rights reserved by the Art Institute of Chicago and VAGA, New York, NY, 1930.934, digital file © The Art Institute of Chicago. All Rights Reserved. Regionalism in American painting developed at the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929.

Exclusively Midwestern in origin, Regionalism portrayed American life as simple and rural, in direct contrast to the urban-based Realist paintings that had dominated the American art scene since the turn of the century. Unlike Realism, Regionalism left no room for social criticism. So went the theory. In reality, this may not have always been so. Since first shown at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930, Grant Wood's American Gothic has been fodder for speculation. In one camp were those who believed the painting was a celebration of "American" values; in the other were those who saw it as a satiric critique of the selfsame thing. The pair's dour expressions led many outside the Midwest to believe that Wood, a self-proclaimed Regionalist, was poking fun at rural life. Wood himself denied this in some interviews, but in others hinted that there were indeed some satiric elements present. (He wouldn't say which elements those were.) Wood's subjects spurred much of the debate. Was the pair a farmer husband and wife, or a father and daughter? Many Iowa farmers' wives objected to what they perceived as a negative portrayal, writing letters of complaint to the artist.

Wood later revealed that the models were his 30-year-old sister and their 62-year-old family dentist. The subjects' motivations, even when considered as father and daughter, are unclear: The man may be a farmer holding a pitchfork, nothing more than a piece of farming equipment. Or he may not be a farmer at all, but a preacher, perhaps, jealously guarding his daughter from male suitors. Critics who interpret the woman as his daughter have often assumed that she was a spinster -- but just what kind of spinster is left to the imagination. Some see the stray curl at the nape of her neck as related to the snake plant in the background, each one symbolizing a sharp-tongued "old maid." Sister Wendy sees in the curl, however, a sign that she is not as repressed as her buttoned-up exterior might indicate. Grant Wood's American Gothic has been part of the Art Institute of Chicago's Department of Modern and Contemporary Art since he debuted it there in 1930. The AIC's modern art collection is considered one of the best and most comprehensive in the world.

The Painting « American Gothic House Center – Eldon, IA The Painting American Gothic, 1930 by Grant Wood. All rights reserved Wood Graham Beneficiaries/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. When viewing the painting, it is important to realize the extent to which Wood designed and conceptualized American Gothic. At first look, many believe American Gothic is a realistic painting, and in a sense this is true. Looking at the painting and then at the actual house, which was the model for the painting, it is clear Wood rendered a realistic version of the house. Similarly, Wood’s two models, his sister Nan and his dentist Dr. B.H. McKeeby, are realistically recreated, although when viewing a photograph of Nan, it can be seen his sister’s face is somewhat elongated. Wood’s free use of “reality” can also be seen by the addition of a barn and by creating a scene—a man and woman posed in front of the house—which never occurred. The models for the artwork never posed together when they were drawn prior to, or during the painting of American Gothic.

The House Although Wood had intended for some time to do a “portrait” of Midwestern “types,” it is known that the house in Eldon, Iowa inspired the painting Wood called American Gothic, because only the house is shown in surviving preliminary sketches for the painting. Another early sketch places a man and woman in front of the house, very similar to the final composition. Wood’s selection of this arrangement may have been based on the late nineteenth and early twentieth century practice of traveling photographers posing subjects in front of their homes. The choice by either the homeowner or photographer as to where the people stood, testifies to the association Americans have with their homes as extensions of themselves. In rural America, a home not only signified family but also the mutual hard work of its members, and as the family’s greatest financial possession. Wood, who rarely explained his work, did not clarify his choice of this house. Was he mocking the inclusion of this window as a homeowner’s choice to make an ordinary house look grander than it was? Or was he honoring the effort the homeowners took (and the additional expense they incurred), to make an artistic statement that was not otherwise needed? No one knows for sure. But it is true that the choice was not made by chance.

Wood used his compositional elements with such care that some importance is attached to his choice of the house. The Window Important compositional elements of the painting are based upon the window. It has two equal arches, capped by the oddly shaped pane that joins them together from the top. Looking at the painting in its entirety, the window is duplicated with the two halves of the window repeated by the two human figures standing side by side The roof of the house visually joins the man and woman in the same way that the oddly shaped top pane of glass joins the two arches of the window. The Hayfork In a surviving pre-painting sketch, the male figure holds a rake rather than the three tined hayfork of the painting. Again, this cannot have been an idle choice. Scholars, knowing Wood’s antic sense of humor, speculate endlessly on the significance of the hayfork. Is it an allusion to a devil’s pitchfork or something less sinister? If Wood was making such a statement, he kept it to himself. One thing that is clear is that he regarded the shape important enough to reinforce it by repeating it in the stitching on the male figure’s bib overalls (continuing into the pattern of his shirt).

It also functions compositionally, as it mirrors (upside down) the shape of the panes in the upstairs window. This kind of repetitive pattern enlivens the composition and gives it rhythm. The Plants The plants were not on the porch of the house when Wood created his sketches. Why include a geranium and a mother-in-law’s tongue (Sansevieria)? Wood did not disclose the reason for his choices, but plants often have symbolic meanings. Geraniums are sometimes used to signify melancholy and sometimes, among other things, ineptitude. Wanda Corn, a leading scholar on Wood and author of Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision, has speculated that the hardiness of Sansevieria made it popular with pioneer women and his use of the plant may be no more than an allusion to the hardiness of those women. Whatever the plants may symbolize they do contribute to the composition: the geraniums echo the shape of the trees behind the house, the three leaves of the mother-in-law’s tongue repeat once again, on a smaller scale, the pattern of the window, the hay fork, and the stitching on the bib overalls.

Moreover, the same plants appear in the portrait Wood painted of his mother in 1929. In Woman with Plants, his mother sits in front of a geranium (and a begonia) that, as in American Gothic, echo the tree shapes in the background, and she holds a potted mother-in-law’s tongue in front of her. Reusing elements from one painting to the next is common in Wood’s work and if the plants had symbolic meaning in addition to their compositional importance, that too carried from painting to painting. The Patterns The continuity of other patterns also ties the composition together. Most notable is the pattern on the curtains in the upstairs window and the similar pattern on the woman’s apron. It is worth noting that these are pure pattern, both the curtain and apron lack the distortion that would realistically occur from folds in fabric. It is worth noting the rickrack edging on the apron of American Gothic’s female figure is found on his mother’s apron in Woman with Plants, and both women wear a cameo brooch. The Expressions Described as dour, even ill-humored, which seems at first to contradict Wood’s claim that he was painting an “affectionate portrait” of Midwestern types.

The man and woman (in one rare explanation Wood claimed they were father and daughter) seem to be “no nonsense” characters. An explanation for the stoic expressions may come from early photographs. Photographers discouraged models from smiling because of the film’s need for long exposure times. Therefore, borrowing from that photographic practice would result in unsmiling faces. Adding a human touch softens the sternness of the subjects. An errant curl that hangs down behind her right ear softens the severity of the woman’s hairdo. The man’s gold collar button is a bit on the showy side for someone we otherwise take to be a sober, conservative man. Do we really know how Wood feels about his creations? It seems unlikely that he is holding them up for ridicule; it seems more likely that Wood had mixed feelings about the people he sought to portray.

Question: Who, in 1930, painted the picture American Gothic?
Answer: Grant Wood